58 replies to this topic

[Brauer]

Yiryi-Sa, on 23 August 2020 - 07:34 AM, said:

It does; it gets a benefit from mechs with:

Heat quirks (mechs that have a universal -10% Heat general quirk)
Skill points assigned to Heat Gen weapon nodes

It gets another bonus, indirectly, from mechs with Heat Dissipation quirks (heat dissapation works immediately when a Laser AMS is firing) but this is usually offset by the fact that mechs with this quirk generally fit less heatsinks or have a smaller engine size below 250.

None of that really matters though because laser ams is literally hot gabage.

[Yiryi-Sa]

Brauer, on 23 August 2020 - 07:46 AM, said:

None of that really matters though because laser ams is literally hot gabage.

No, it isn't. Its a rather niche defensive tool. Not very good when running really hot ballistic builds (as your tonnage is devoted to ammo); its really effective on laser boats that have the heat sinks to absorb it.

[Brauer]

Yiryi-Sa, on 23 August 2020 - 07:56 AM, said:

No, it isn't. Its a rather niche defensive tool. Not very good when running really hot ballistic builds (as your tonnage is devoted to ammo); its really effective on laser boats that have the heat sinks to absorb it.

In basically every case you are better off with an AMS and one ton of ammo. Having LAMS mounted means you have less heat to use to inflict damage on your enemy. If a mech boating lasers has LAMS equipped it is just severely nerfing it's own dps.

[VonBruinwald]

Brauer, on 23 August 2020 - 12:24 PM, said:

In basically every case you are better off with an AMS and one ton of ammo. Having LAMS mounted means you have less heat to use to inflict damage on your enemy. If a mech boating lasers has LAMS equipped it is just severely nerfing it's own dps.

You can toggle (L)AMS on/off.

Going ballistic is good if you don't want to micro but it also has downsides, the moment you run out of ammo it's dead weight, not to mention ammo explosions.

Both are situational, the question is what kind of situations do you find yourself in more.

[Yiryi-Sa]

VonBruinwald, on 23 August 2020 - 01:41 PM, said:

You can toggle (L)AMS on/off.

Going ballistic is good if you don't want to micro but it also has downsides, the moment you run out of ammo it's dead weight, not to mention ammo explosions.

Both are situational, the question is what kind of situations do you find yourself in more.

Yes, thank you. And I also read or hear the "well, you wouldn't micromanage it in a brawl;" except we all do it - all the time - with coolshots.

[Brauer]

I know you can turn it off, that doesn't make LAMS better than a single ams and a ton of ammo. The heat it generates, and thus the need to turn it off, is exactly why LAMS is not a good pick.

[VonBruinwald]

Brauer, on 23 August 2020 - 04:55 PM, said:

I know you can turn it off, that doesn't make LAMS better than a single ams and a ton of ammo. The heat it generates, and thus the need to turn it off, is exactly why LAMS is not a good pick.

AMS uses ammo, once it runs out you're carrying dead weight. Heat is an infinite resource, ammo is not.

[JediPanther]

VonBruinwald, on 23 August 2020 - 05:36 PM, said:

AMS uses ammo, once it runs out you're carrying dead weight. Heat is an infinite resource, ammo is not.

Rocks,buildings and other environmental things never run out either.

[Zirconium Kaze]

Jackal Noble, on 09 July 2020 - 09:24 PM, said:

Shouldn't it benefit from ballistic ammo bonus on the skill tree?

Just referring to the standard AMS. It has an ammo feed and shoots missiles down with bullets.
Color coding aside (ballistic family being purple, ams family being lime-green)

It also shouldn't hit missiles through cover. But meh.

[Brauer]

VonBruinwald, on 23 August 2020 - 05:36 PM, said:

AMS uses ammo, once it runs out you're carrying dead weight. Heat is an infinite resource, ammo is not.

Heat is not an infinite resource. Your mech's heatcap and heat dissipation rate define your maximum heat. One of the elements of good play is ensuring that you are maximizing both how much of your available heat you are translating into damage to the enemy and how efficient the damage you inflict is. Having LAMS equipped is, in that context, a self nerf.

Edited by Brauer, 23 August 2020 - 07:22 PM.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

VonBruinwald, on 23 August 2020 - 05:36 PM, said:

AMS uses ammo, once it runs out you're carrying dead weight. Heat is an infinite resource, ammo is not.

LAMS uses heat, once you shut it down to keep your heat build up in check, you are carrying dead weight.

[VonBruinwald]

Brauer, on 23 August 2020 - 07:03 PM, said:

Heat is not an infinite resource. Your mech's heatcap and heat dissipation rate define your maximum heat. One of the elements of good play is ensuring that you are maximizing both how much of your available heat you are translating into damage to the enemy and how efficient the damage you inflict is. Having LAMS equipped is, in that context, a self nerf.

Heat as a resource is infinite, it may not be a bottomless pool but as long as you have the opportunity to cool more heat will become available. The problem is heat is a shared with your weapons which means it becomes more difficult to manage if you're having to balance it between offence and defence; if your LAMS is on you're eating into your offence. But in that same context regular AMS is a self-nerf as it's the equivalent of a heatsink+ammo which translates to more DPS/damage.

JediPanther is right in that rock beats rocket.

[Brauer]

VonBruinwald, on 24 August 2020 - 01:45 AM, said:

Heat as a resource is infinite, it may not be a bottomless pool but as long as you have the opportunity to cool more heat will become available. The problem is heat is a shared with your weapons which means it becomes more difficult to manage if you're having to balance it between offence and defence; if your LAMS is on you're eating into your offence. But in that same context regular AMS is a self-nerf as it's the equivalent of a heatsink+ammo which translates to more DPS/damage.

JediPanther is right in that rock beats rocket.

Yes, AMS is always a bit of a self nerf, but a ton and a half for AMS plus a ton of ammo isn't too bad. Clan-side LAMS weighs just one half ton less but produces a ton of heat. IS-side it weighs the same amount and produces a ton of heat. LAMS is a double self-nerf. Not only are you devoting tonnage to ams instead of DHS, armor, ammo, or something else that is more reliably useful, BUT you are also going to either generate far more heat or have to run with LAMS turned off (which kind of defeats the purpose).

At the end of the day cover is king, but if you're going to run ams it is better to just take an AMS and a ton of ammo rather than deal with the heat produced by LAMS.

Edited by Brauer, 24 August 2020 - 11:15 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

Brauer, on 24 August 2020 - 04:37 AM, said:

you are also going to either generate far more heat or have to run with LAMS turned off (which kind of defeats the purpose).

That last bit is they key, knowing when to turn it off. There are reasons to switch AMS off.

[Brauer]

VonBruinwald, on 24 August 2020 - 01:04 PM, said:

That last bit is they key, knowing when to turn it off. There are reasons to switch AMS off.

...

Having an additional thing to micromanage is not good. In nearly all cases good builds are fairly user friendly, and that is one small part of what makes them good. At the same time, there are few times where shutting off ams is actually a good move.

You all have any builds that you think actually benefit from LAMS, because the cases presented so far are not good use cases. Someone, for example, claimed that a laser vom mech is a good LAMS carrier because it has a lot of DHS. BUT unless you literally are not firing or are severely under-gunned you want all of your heat dedicated to killing the enemy. Laser vom mechs run hot enough without slapping an additional three heat per second or whatever it is for LAMS.

[Yiryi-Sa]

Brauer, on 24 August 2020 - 01:10 PM, said:

...without slapping an additional three heat per second or whatever it is for LAMS.

As I stated earlier, the heat per second gets adjusted through a few factors ("Heat" mech chassis quirks, weapon heat generation quirks) and is affected through indirect skill quirks, such as Cool Run and Heat Management (though heat management is the least important factor).

In any case, switching a LAMS on and off is not as micro-intensive as it seems; otherwise, we'd have to consider whether or not coolshots, UAVs or artillery are problematic for their increased micromanagement. But we don't; we've all learned and adapted it into our play styles.

[Jman5]

Brauer, on 24 August 2020 - 01:10 PM, said:

...

Having an additional thing to micromanage is not good. In nearly all cases good builds are fairly user friendly, and that is one small part of what makes them good. At the same time, there are few times where shutting off ams is actually a good move.

You all have any builds that you think actually benefit from LAMS, because the cases presented so far are not good use cases. Someone, for example, claimed that a laser vom mech is a good LAMS carrier because it has a lot of DHS. BUT unless you literally are not firing or are severely under-gunned you want all of your heat dedicated to killing the enemy. Laser vom mechs run hot enough without slapping an additional three heat per second or whatever it is for LAMS.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to add a LAMS on top of a laser boat build. That's just asking for trouble.

Any build that has a very low heat profile could be good candidate for a LAMS because you're not using the heat for anything else. Certain Gauss, LBX, or machine gun builds for example. It's fairly niche, but I wouldn't say it's entirely useless.

[Brauer]

Jman5, on 24 August 2020 - 02:00 PM, said:

Yeah, you wouldn't want to add a LAMS on top of a laser boat build. That's just asking for trouble.

Any build that has a very low heat profile could be good candidate for a LAMS because you're not using the heat for anything else. Certain Gauss, LBX, or machine gun builds for example. It's fairly niche, but I wouldn't say it's entirely useless.

I dunno, anytime I run a quad lbx10 Sleipnir I get heat capped eventually, it takes a while, but even cool-running builds if properly built and played well will generally end up heat-capped eventually and LAMS just make it happen that much faster.

Yiryi-Sa, on 24 August 2020 - 01:28 PM, said:

As I stated earlier, the heat per second gets adjusted through a few factors ("Heat" mech chassis quirks, weapon heat generation quirks) and is affected through indirect skill quirks, such as Cool Run and Heat Management (though heat management is the least important factor).

In any case, switching a LAMS on and off is not as micro-intensive as it seems; otherwise, we'd have to consider whether or not coolshots, UAVs or artillery are problematic for their increased micromanagement. But we don't; we've all learned and adapted it into our play styles.

Post a build that is actually improved by adding LAMS then. Played properly I wager it is not improved when compared against either a build with no and, or a build with ams+ammo.

I know plenty about the game mechanics, you do not need to explain to me that mech skills and quirks exist. I haven't run into a case where they are anywhere near strong enough to make LAMS a good choice when compared to the alternatives. I know the game mechanics well enough to see LAMS as the hot garbage that it is.

[MyriadDigits]

Did it occur to any of you LAMS guys that 1 ton per AMS is more than enough for basically all of your matches? The times you'll want that extra 2.5-3 h/s dissipation will far outnumber the number of times you'll run 1 ton per AMS dry. I'd even wager you could get away with half a ton per AMS and it'd still be better than having LAMS guzzle your heat in the majority of matches.

Maybe there are some niches with Gauss or MG boats, but those are just niches.

Also, just put the ammo in the head/legs if your so worried about ammo dets lol.

[Yiryi-Sa]

Brauer, on 24 August 2020 - 02:05 PM, said:

Post a build that is actually improved by adding LAMS then.

And no one was claiming that LAMS improves a build.

The only thing I've stated here is that LAMS benefits from some of the quirks and skill tree nodes, where by someone stated they didn't think it did.

The only other thing that I'm stating is that LAMS is not as big of a detractor as claimed.

Edited by Yiryi-Sa, 24 August 2020 - 02:20 PM.